Fatigue life prediction of heavy mining equipment. Part 2: Behaviour of corner crack in steel welded box section and remaining fatigue life determination

Frequent fatigue failure of mining equipment has created a need for fatigue life prediction of several components that suffer from frequent recurrence of fatigue cracking. The focus of this paper is the frequent occurrence of fatigue cracks in the boom of cable shovels, which consists of a twin box girder joining together near both extremities. After the determination of load spectrum and the material fatigue properties by field monitoring and material testing, the fatigue behaviour of a cracked shovel boom was investigated. Two-tip corner cracks were of particular interest since they are commonly observed in the field. These cracks typically initiate in the flange at the toe of web to flange or flange to diaphragm welds and propagate into the web. Detailed finite element models with corner cracks were developed for the boom and stress intensity factors for various crack configurations were evaluated from the finite element analysis results. The growth behaviour of corner cracks was studied and a simplified method is presented for the fatigue life prediction. Fracture toughness tests were conducted on single edge notch bend specimens at room temperature and low temperature (−50 ∘C). The remaining life of a cracked boom is then determined based on brittle fracture or unstable crack growth.